At the age of five, before her bishop fathers sermon, Sisaundra Lewis sang on stage for the first time.

Admiring her older sisters who had found success as group The Lewis Sisters, opening up for gospel choirs such The Williams Brothers and The Gospel Keynotes, the urge to sing started at a young age for Lewis and has continued to persist through a lush career spanning three decades. She became 'the little girl with the voice' to those around her, teaching herself to sing while growing up in groves and apple orchards between Florida and New York.

“It was really an experience that I never, ever had felt before to be able to share such inspirational music and words with people that would change their emotions and transform them in the moment,” says Lewis. “It was a beautiful gift to acknowledge and go, wow, because in black churches, either you're going to be good or you're not and they will let you know. So they let me know, okay, she got a little something. Then I started growing my gift from there.”

“From there” meant Lewis relocating to Atlanta after high school, only a few years after hearing secular music for the first time at 16-years-old. She soon became an understudy for a play in Philadelphia and led her to an audition in Yokohama, Japan, meeting Atlanta-based singer Peabo Bryson, who would invite her on his tour.

Known for his hit with Roberta Flack, "Tonight, I Celebrate My Love," and top single “If You’re Ever In My Arms Again,” Bryson released a duet with Celine Dion for the 1991 Beauty and the Beast soundtrack. Lewis was a year and a half into touring with Bryson and became the stand-in for Dion during shows without her appearance. This connected Lewis to Celine. She was invited to tour with her as a vocal director.

“It’s so crazy because I literally taught myself to sing in the groves, so it was amazing to be able to come out of, I say, the wilderness and someone can see something in you and apply it to something so big that you've never dreamed of, never seen, never imagined in my life,” says Lewis, who worked on 5 world tours with Dion.

After a record deal for A&M records that led Lewis to a Top 5 hit in the U.K., under the moniker Degrees of Motion, was shelved, and becoming successful as a jingle performer for commercials, Lewis returned to her home state of Florida to focus on her family, both her parents and raising her children, and working locally for Disney World’s Cirque du Soleil's show La Nouba.

“I thank God for allowing my dad to finally accept me for who I am, which gave me the courage to move forward, to do other things, because I think we all seek that and want to be accepted by our parents. But it's a whole other level. When your parent is also your spiritual advisor, your pastor, you know, your bishop, all of that stuff,” explains Lewis. “So to get that from him before he passed away gave me a lot of strength to do what I needed to do and from those things, because of where it came from, it made me feel responsible and accountable to not just myself and a dream, but to his belief in me and his legacy for allowing me to use family property to do something that he really didn't encourage in any of us to do, but finally saw that I could sing.”

A decade later and her family, specifically her daughter, would encourage Lewis to audition for talent competition show The Voice. Working under country singer Blake Shelton after all five judges turned for her performance of Aretha Franklin’s “Ain’t No Way,” Lewis was eliminated during the show’s quarter finals. But the support from her mother, Lewis’ inspiration for her latest single “Yes (You'd Hear My Mom Say),” was also important for her success.

“I got the support from my children and the connection for my children that really showed me the foundation of my family was very strong. And as a single mom, that meant so much to me. And another big highlight was my mom, who never came to see me perform in any of my major shows with any artist I've been with. She never came because it was not gospel. So she came to California to see me on The Voice, and she just looked at me and she was just like, wow, I'm so proud of you,” says Lewis. “Just to have her out there and then have her approval, I felt like at 44, I was finally freed of that ‘do you accept me’ thing? ‘Cause my parents and I grew up listening to my mom. Like my mom was my idol.”

Sisaundra now hosts her talk show The Sisaundra Show on AFRO TV featuring a backing performance band For the Culture. While on set, she shared “Yes (You'd Hear My Mom Say),” and alongside For the Culture created the instrumentals on the spot. Lewis translated her inspiration from her mother, also sang in their church, to a track that has since gone viral on TikTok after its broadcasted performance on the show.

“She could sing like Mahalia Jackson. So the song "Yes (You'd Hear My Mom Say)' is because my father, of course, was the bishop. My dad would deliver these powerful sermons and then my mom would start singing and she would sing, 'I need thee, o, I need thee,' and then you would hear my mom say, 'Let the church say yes' and my band and I took that one day and we captured it.”

Lewis’ powerful vocals shine throughout the gospel track, truly resonating her story with her faith and inspiring life within its sound.

“I used to say that this is totally out of nowhere, but it's totally out of God's place. I strongly believe in divine appointment. This song is inspired by my mom, but it just says everything about releasing and letting go and saying yes to all the good things that God has in store for you. You look at people and everything that's going on around the world -- people are hungry, people are sick. There's a pandemic we're just trying to get over--there's so much division. We just need to come together. And if we say yes and we say it in a manner of love, which is God's love, how can we go wrong? We just can't.”

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